PixiepalaceTalking about children\'s books and gender issues in stories and media2016-06-11T23:03:19Zhttp://www.pixiepalace.com/feed/atom/WordPressRosepixiehttp://www.pixiepalace.comhttp://www.pixiepalace.com/?p=68832016-06-11T23:03:19Z2016-06-11T23:03:19ZThere is a new movie out, based on a book, called Me Before You. It tells a story about a man who is very suddenly severely disabled in an accident. Despite the bubbly attendant at his bedside, he is depressed by his circumstances and cannot come to terms with the future he sees before him. He ultimately chooses to end his own life.

There is a massive movement to protest this movie on the grounds that it “normalizes” suicide for disabled people. The objection is that it reinforces the idea that life is not worth living with a disability. The protesters fear that the movie portrays choosing suicide over life in such a situation is portrayed as a noble choice. There is a very great deal of self-righteous furor around this movie (and presumably the source book).

I keep hearing about this movie in this context and to be honest the protests make me very uncomfortable. I agree that we don’t want to glamorize suicide, but I disagree that telling stories about it does that. I don’t think that stories about people with suddenly inflicted disabilities need to always be uplifting. It seems to me that denying this reaction to a sudden disability is far more harmful than telling stories that include it could ever be.

It is completely normal for people with disabilities, particularly disabilities that become part of a person’s life when they were previously living without any such circumstance, to become seriously depressed and even suicidal. Denying that as a normal response bothers me a lot more than a story about a disabled person who is suicidal does. Sometimes we have to hear about the people who didn’t get through that depression in order to begin to understand it.

It is tragic and sad that people consider suicide or actually choose to die instead of live their lives with disabilities, but it is a fact of the world we live in and pretending it is not will not help us address it. If we refuse to allow stories to be told that have outcomes we don’t like we will never learn to be supportive and accepting. We will never learn to accept it when we face such depression and despair ourselves.

The sad and frustrating reality of our culture is that we don’t believe people with disabilities can have lives that are as happy and fulfilling as lives without them. We look at disabled people with a sort of condescending pity, no matter how much we say otherwise. We often say all the right things, but we don’t act it. And sometimes we have good reasons for it and great intentions behind it, but that doesn’t change that the story it tells is that life as a disabled person is not as full of potential as life not disabled.

We say things like “oh, I couldn’t live that way, you are so strong.” That does not tell someone they are special for living with it, it tells them that having it in the first place makes their life less worth living, less full of hope. It tells them they are broken. If we want to change the story, we have to stop seeing disabilities as exceptional and start seeing them as simply challenges not everyone faces in a world where everyone faces challenges.

It is really hard to have a disability and not see a world full of people who don’t seem to have such challenges in their lives. It feels unfair and like the disability is a burden most people never even have to understand how to carry. It feels like being disabled means your life will be somehow diminished. And because our culture encourages hiding disabilities whenever possible and treating those who obviously have them as if they do have a diminished capacity to manage their lives, that impression is always going to be there at least some of the time even for the proudest, most capable disabled person.

It seems to me that banning stories were people are depressed or who cannot accept their realities will only teach us all that being depressed or struggling to accept a situation is not ok. And it is. It needs to be. Depression and the idea that a life with a disability cannot be as full as a life without one are both very real and very serious. They are shockingly common factors in our culture. As long as we continue telling people that becoming depressed or feeling like maybe it would be better if they were dead means that something is wrong with them we will never be able to actually help them.

One of the most dangerous features of mental health difficulties is that we often believe they mean that we are defective. We look around at all the stories of happy people and it is very easy to feel like there is something wrong with us for not being happy too. And there is nothing abnormal or wrong with being depressed. What is wrong is telling someone who is facing a major life-altering change that being upset or feeling hopeless or questioning if it’s worth it to go on that being sad or depressed about that means something is wrong with them. Depression is a part of coping for so many people. It’s a part of grieving the life we have lost and coming to terms with the life ahead of us. For some people that is a lifetime struggle and for some it is of shorter duration and for everyone who suffers from it help can be a lifesaver, but it isn’t abnormal or wrong.

And sometimes, just as with everything else in the world, people fail to meet that challenge and come to terms with whatever they are struggling with. It’s a terribly hard thing to do. Heartbreakingly so. And it’s still hard, but so much more manageable, with empathetic help and messages that being depressed about such parts of life is ok. Even needing medical treatment to get through it is ok. It’s not a weakness to ask for help and it’s not a weakness to need it.

Nobody is happy about suddenly having a disability that materially changes their life. That is normal. And we should absolutely work to make suicide less common, but telling people that feeling suicidal in such a moment means something is wrong with them will only make it worse. It makes them hide it and feel like they are weak and even more hopeless (what is the point of it all if even the feelings you cannot control mean you are broken?).

There need to be stories of noble disabled men and women who hold their heads high and fight the good fight and live lives as full and rich as if they had no disability with nary a blip of doubt. Those are undoubtedly important. But there also need to be stories about people who sink into despair when faced with such a challenge and the sudden reality of a future much different than that they planned for. There need to be stories of people who get through their depression and become stronger for it, but there also need to be stories of people who fail to come out the other side of that despair and never manage to build new lives and new plans. We can’t all be so noble and resiliant that we never lose hope. Even the people who appear to never get depressed often struggle with their own despair at times. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with any of us.

So yes, I think it’s tragic that the main character in this movie ultimately gives in to that depression and ends his own life. But I also think maybe that is exactly the story we need to hear sometimes, both those of us who are disabled and those of us who are not. If we as audience can see how rich and full the life he gives up could have been, then maybe we can learn to stop treating disability with pity in general and recognize the struggles that those who have them go through to accept the challenges they face. And maybe we can learn to not see depression as something wrong with someone so much as something normal that simply might need to be recognized so that help can be given.

There is nothing wrong with feeling hopeless and depressed. There is only something wrong with denying that it is normal. There is something wrong with telling the many, many people who do feel that way that they are failing simply by feeling that way. There is something wrong with not recognizing that this is a reality and maybe we all need to change the story they hear in order to help give them hope again.

Maybe what we need to learn from this movie and others like it is that life is not hopeless no matter how big the challenges we face are, but that doesn’t mean we won’t feel like it is sometimes. If you look through the stories that are at the core of our culture, you find a pattern in them where the hero does despair and lose hope for a while only to come out the other side of that depression stronger than they were before. Maybe that sadness is a actually the possibility of strength, the challenge we need to face to grow. And maybe, like all challenges, there are people who simply can’t overcome it alone. And that’s ok too. We should never have to meet every challenge alone.

Instead of saying disabilities aren’t hard to accept or that becoming depressed, even suicidal, as a result of them means that something is wrong, maybe we need to consider that it’s simply part of the process for many and do what we can to help them regain hope instead of saying that losing it is a weakness of character. It’s not a weakness, it’s a part of being human. And learning to accept and face a disability and what it means for your life is very hard.

Nobody is able to be perfectly optimistic and hopeful all the time. And that’s ok.

]]>0Rosepixiehttp://www.pixiepalace.comhttp://www.pixiepalace.com/?p=68762016-06-01T01:30:16Z2016-06-01T01:25:22ZWhen we talk about learning, we most often imagine students at individual desks in a classroom led by a teacher. Dedicated time spent focusing on lessons. But that isn’t the only place we learn language, math, health, culture, history, social skills, and countless other things.

One of the best places to learn is around the family dinner table. It may seem odd – we’re just sitting around sharing food – but that ritual (and it is a ritual whether you say prayers or stress table manners or not) is one of the most powerful learning tools we have, no matter the age of the learner. We learn so many things sitting around the table just talking with our families!

We learn to eat based on what we are exposed to as well. What we see our parents eat, what is served to us at mealtimes, impacts how we eat and think of eating for the rest of our lives. Without any words at all we teach our kids about health and nutrition as we eat together every night. And that isn’t to say that family dinners will teach kids to eat well – it will teach them *how* to eat whether what we serve is good or not, so be careful to teach them what you want them to learn.

Everyone learns social skills while sharing meals as well. Again, the lessons vary based on the company, but there are always lessons there. Mealtime teaches us how to interact and why. Practice makes perfect with social skills just as with anything else. When we spend meals talking and listening and sharing our lives, we learn to listen and talk and care about each other’s lives. These are skills that open doors throughout all aspects of life, from professional to personal and beyond.

Mealtimes are also one of the most culturally important times in our lives. How we share meals and the rules we learn there are one of the most powerful things that teach us about our cultures and values. The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners by Margaret Visser (cover above) is an absolutely fascinating book that examines the ways in which meals reveal cultural values with examples from some of the most interesting mealtime traditions from around the world. If you ever wondered what the routines you learned for dinnertime growing up say about your family values, Visser’s book is a great place to start figuring it out! We literally learn culture through sharing meals.

Given the boundless possibilities of mealtimes, both culinary and otherwise, it should come as no surprise that there is a publisher entirely focused on the literacy of food. On helping us to think about, question, and even laugh at what we eat and why. As adults we have to figure out what to buy at the grocery store and which advice to consider (is organic food better for us or should we care more about calorie count?), but as kids it’s often simply a matter of if we should try something at all. Readers to Eaters aims to get kids to be more open to food and to encourage them to explore a whole world of new ideas about food. Maybe there’s as much to learn about how and why we eat what we do at the library as at the grocery store!

What does your dinner say about your culture and values? What is it teaching you and your family?

]]>0Rosepixiehttp://www.pixiepalace.comhttp://www.pixiepalace.com/?p=68682016-05-22T01:51:27Z2016-05-22T01:51:27ZI have no idea why I have another Christmas story today, but I guess it simply works out that way sometimes!

My second favorite Christmas story is Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. It’s been retold probably thousands of times in hundreds of ways, so chances are you know the story already. If you don’t know it, please look it up. My favorite version (and one of the most accurate movie versions, interestingly enough) is A Muppet Christmas Carol, but there are tons of great versions out there. Even My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic recently did a good adaptation of the story.

The reason that I love this particular tale is that it’s all about the power of stories. The tool that the ghosts use to show Scrooge that Christmas is worthwhile is stories – about his own past and where his issues with the holiday came from, about the value it has for the people around him, and about what may happen in the future if he continues to miss the values that the holiday celebrates. Stories are powerful things and they make a big impression on Scrooge, as they do on the reader or watcher as well. They show us the world in new ways and ourselves in old ways we may have forgotten. Stories show our hopes, dreams, and fears. Stories let us grow and change. And those are the things that holiday celebrations with loved ones are all about.

]]>0Rosepixiehttp://www.pixiepalace.comhttp://www.pixiepalace.com/?p=68632016-05-20T15:57:24Z2016-05-20T15:57:24ZToday I want to share perhaps my favorite television commercial. The ad was part of a great campaign advertising cheese and was part of a series of ads all ending in either the tagline “Behold the Power of Cheese” or “Ahh, the Power of Cheese”. It’s from sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s and was shown again during the holiday season for several years after that.

Besides being adorable, I love this ad because it tells a complete story in such a spare and simple way. There is very little dialogue and most of the ad spends time building excitement for what’s in the living room, which the little girl has seen already, but the audience doesn’t see until her parents show up. And then the dialogue at the end is only two lines long, but it tells us exactly what happens and leads perfectly to the tagline, “Ahh, the Power of Cheese”.

This isn’t the sharpest video, but it’s the best one I can find for this ad. If you know of a better video of it online that I can link to, let me know and I’ll update the post with it.

]]>0Rosepixiehttp://www.pixiepalace.comhttp://www.pixiepalace.com/?p=68562015-07-02T04:02:01Z2015-06-22T20:34:51ZIt should come as no surprise to most of the people who know me that I *adore* stories. Stories of all shapes and sizes and styles. Books, legends, commercials, sportscasts, excuses, smiles – stories are everywhere. And *how* they are told *makes* the story. The same tale can change to a thousand different tales when retold in different ways.

I love listening to storytellers. As much as I like listening to personal stories, though, I often find it far more interesting to listen to someone tell a story that is not from their own experience because the stories chosen and how they are told can tell you so much more about the type of person they are. Stories are magic windows into the world around us and they let us see both beyond and inside of ourselves.

My husband would tell you that I collect books, but I don’t think of it that way. I think that I collect stories and some of them just happen to be in book form.

I wanted to share this Ted Talk because I think it does a great job of talking about the magic of stories and the importance of telling and listening to stories beyond our own experiences.

]]>0Rosepixiehttp://www.pixiepalace.comhttp://www.pixiepalace.com/?p=68532015-06-07T19:31:03Z2015-06-07T19:31:03ZOver the past few days, I have begun watching the YouTube series “The March Family Letters”. This is from the same team that did “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries” and “Frankenstein, M.D.” (among others). This time they are retelling Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

I’m twenty episodes in (just over half of what has been posted so far) and I’m not actually sure how I feel about it yet. Like the previous adaptations from this group, it’s a modern vlog retelling of the classic novel. Unlike the previous shows, I’m not as convinced by their modern updates to this particular story. I like the series, but it doesn’t feel like Little Women to me.

Since I think Meg has gone through the most change from book to show, I’m going to start with and sort of focus on her. Meg is the oldest sister and perhaps the one I identified most with in the books. She was very well-rounded there. Alcott’s Meg is a responsible woman who is clearly capable of all the things a proper woman did (running a frugal, yet inviting household, caring for a family, coping in a crisis, etc.), but also a young woman able to dream of what she wants and enjoy the little pleasures around her. She clearly feels their poverty in ways the younger sisters don’t and isn’t happy about it, but she still manages to appreciate the ways they are lucky.

The Meg portrayed in “The March Family Letters” is rather different. She is clearly still a highly responsible woman, but at times it’s almost too her detriment in ways I never felt it was in the book. She feels older and almost bitter in some ways and when she talks about girlish pleasures (parties and fashion), it always seems to have a sarcastic quality instead of being genuine pleasure. I like that she is both working towards a career (although I question if any of the March girls would work so hard towards a career she doesn’t actually want) and wanting the family and kids future where she can be a stay-at-home mom. I’m just not so sure I see Meg in this young woman who is paranoid about poverty enough to study something she doesn’t care much about and who seems to not see the point in things that exist only for pleasure.

In the series, John Brooks (Meg’s eventual husband) is transformed in Joan Brooks. I am not sure about this change yet, although I very much like Joan’s character. The problem is that she doesn’t feel that much like John Brooks to me. I’m also not sure what it means for Meg’s future in the story. I love the idea of them having a relationship and getting married and all, but part of Meg’s story was that she was the conventional sister. She led the life she was expected to lead and was happy in it – she was the proof that you could absolutely be happy in that role, which I think was a really important element of the feminist message of Alcott’s book. She clearly shows through Meg that you can be feminist and conventional at the same time – it doesn’t have to be a contradiction. The point is to be able to choose whatever you want, and that means conventional choices are allowed too. So what does this change do for Meg’s conventionality? On the one hand, if done well it could go a long way to giving a normalizing image of a lesbian relationship, but on the other hand it is unconventional in the world we live in today and so the very change in and of itself changes the quality of Meg’s conventionality. I suppose I’ll have to wait and see.

Jo is definitely different in the series from in the book. Instead of being a tomboy, she’s a hardcore feminist. I think that Alcott would absolutely have approved of this and it definitely makes sense. The only issue I have with it is that the change (so far, at least) sort of erases Jo’s personal struggles with the very fact that she is unconventional. I found those struggles to be a particularly fascinating part of the book and hope they aren’t gone entirely. There’s presumably a lot of show left, so perhaps we simply haven’t seen it yet.

Beth is still the sweet, quiet, shy girl from the books. Because of this, we don’t see her that much except when she is singing and playing her guitar. For the fiction of the vlog, that makes a lot of sense. I have little idea, however, if the rest of her personality and character are there to be found or not. In the books, she cares for kittens and dolls, is too shy for school and stays entirely at home, and is happy simply surrounded by her family. Elements of this are here, but the character is older and I think that changes some of these things. We don’t see the kittens or dolls and I have no reason to believe so far that she did not go all the way through regular schooling, but we don’t know. I’m also not sure how they’ll handle her later. I think I need to wait and see more of Beth to really have much opinion on her, but I think she’s a particularly interesting challenge for a project like this.

They’ve done a great job with Amy. We’ve seen precious little of her physical vanity, but her flamboyant and artistic nature as well as her inability to compromise have absolutely come out. Overall, she definitely “feels” like a modern Amy. I’ll be interested to see how they handle her character development, but so far I think she’s probably the one who feels the most accurate to me.

Obviously, I fully intend to watch more of this series. I don’t feel like it is as close an adaptation as some of their previous series’ were, but I think that they are doing some really interesting things and I want to see how they end up working out. One of the virtues of the show is definitely that if you don’t know the source material, it is still fully watchable. And for me, the very fact that it does have me thinking so much about the changes and similarities is one of the biggest draws for this kind of project. The analysis itself is one of my favorite parts of the experience.

If you are interested in watching this show or any of their previous adaptations (they’ve so far done Pride and Prejudice, Sanditon (one of Jane Austen’s unfinished works), Emma, Frankenstein, and Little Women), check out Pemberley Digital on YouTube.

]]>0Rosepixiehttp://www.pixiepalace.comhttp://www.pixiepalace.com/?p=58862015-04-04T22:55:09Z2015-04-04T22:55:09ZPain is an ever-present reality of my life. I have had the same migraine-like headache for fifteen years. Every day it hurts. Everything has the potential to affect it, too. An awkward position might make it worse, a pair of mittens might make it better, but nothing makes it go away. And believe me, I’ve probably tried every remedy or type of medication you’ve ever heard of for headaches and probably dozens you haven’t.

You know what, though? I’m ok with it. It doesn’t ruin my life. Do I do things differently than I might if it wasn’t a factor? Definitely. But it’s the reality of my life and there is no changing that. Even if it stopped tomorrow and I could eat spicy food every day and start listening to metal bands and whatever else I’ve been missing, it wouldn’t change that this has been the reality of my life for fifteen years.

While I would like it to stop, I’ve long since given up waiting for it to do so. It will stop in its own good time and not before, no matter how much I might want it to do otherwise. Fretting and raging and pouting won’t help. All I can do, is cope with it the best I can and keep going.

The hardest lesson was that I can’t wait for it to stop. Not in the sense that I’m eager for it to do so (although that is true as well), but in the sense that not doing things in the expectation that I can do them when it goes away is pointless. I can’t put my life on hold because I have a headache. Believe me, it’s tempting to do so a lot of the time. But it’s the reality I live with – the reality of my life – and if I wait for it to stop, I’ll have missed my life without really having lived it. And that seems much, much worse to me than any amount of pain.

This does not mean that I ignore it. That would be just as bad as waiting for it to go away. This is the reality I live with, so I have to actually live with it. That means that it affects choices I make, and that’s ok. Everyone has things that affect choices they make. I may choose not to eat spicy Thai food because it makes my headache worse just as my mother may choose not to eat crab because it makes it difficult for her to breathe. This is simply the way it is. Everyone makes choices based on factors in their life and this is simply one of mine.

I like to picture my headache as a person. He’s tiny (he has to fit in my head, after all). I’m not sure why my headache is a man, but it always has been to me. He has long reddish blond hair and a long, thick braided beard (something like the dwarves in every Tolkien-esque fantasy world). I think of him as a tiny Viking warrior. He’s very muscular and sort of stocky, but he has a nice smile. That’s always struck me as odd, but maybe it’s not so much. He’s part of me, after all, and smiles are incredibly important to me. He’s also not malicious. He doesn’t mean to hurt me, it’s simply the only way he knows to try and escape from being trapped in my skull. He’s trapped in this miserable situation and just wants to escape. I always sort of see him in pain as well. The more pain he is in, the more he needs to escape, and so the more he hurts me in the process of trying to do so.

I’m not sure why I started picturing this little man trapped in my head, but it helps to do so. It gives me a focus for my feelings about my pain. Sometimes I get really angry with him for hurting me so much. Sometimes I hate him. Other times I feel really bad for him. I feel like if I could make his pain go away, mine would as well. A lot of times I just want to give him a hug. I think a big part of the value of him as a image for me is that he gives me someone to share my experience with in a way that I can with very few others. He knows what it feels like too, what it’s like to be in pain you have no control over for years and years at a time. He reflects not only the physical experience for me, but also the emotional one.

Maybe that lack of any control is the hardest part of the whole experience of having a headache for so long. I can affect it in small ways – I can take the sharp edge off sometimes with peppermints, I can choose to avoid certain types of music because I know pounding rhythms will make it worse – but when it comes down to it, I can’t control it. I can’t make it go away, even temporarily, and I can’t even control how bad it is most of the time. It simply exists, regardless of whatever small changes I may be able to predict or cause.

While I don’t like my headache and I do wish that it would go away, I am largely ok with the reality of it. For both good and ill, it has been a factor in shaping who I am. It is the reality that I live with and part of the lens through which I see the world. There are a thousand factors like that in anybody’s life. This one may loom large in mine, but it isn’t all there is and it doesn’t define me. It does affect me and my choices, though, and there is no escaping that. For almost half of my life, this has been a big part of my reality.

And you know what? I like a lot of what my life has been for the past fifteen years. There are definitely things that I want to change moving forward (headache among them, although that isn’t a change I can control), but overall I think it’s been a pretty good fifteen years. I have had a lot of time when I was happy and, overall, I think my impact on the world has been more good than not. My life isn’t perfect and I have a lot of things I’d like to do and things I’d like to change, but if that wasn’t the case, I guess I have to wonder what the point would be.

Life is about struggle. It’s what makes it interesting and worthwhile. Stories without struggle aren’t interesting and we are all living stories. When we don’t have something to struggle with, people tend to get bored and start struggling with the very lack of challenge. We constantly find or invent new problems because that’s what life is about. My headache is simply another struggle in my life and the lives of the people who care about me. I think that I’m stronger for having had such a challenge. That doesn’t mean that I’m exactly grateful for it or anything, but it does mean that I’ve made a sort of peace with it.

I expect that my headache will continue to be a challenge in my life. And that when it does stop, learning to live without it will probably be a challenge as well (as odd as that sounds), because suddenly a lot of things will change all at once. I hope I get to face that challenge someday. Even if I don’t, though, I know that my life is worth living and that it’s ok both to flounder and to hate the pain, as long as I keep living and learning through it all.

]]>0Rosepixiehttp://www.pixiepalace.comhttp://www.pixiepalace.com/?p=58832012-07-23T00:44:59Z2012-07-23T00:44:59ZWhen was the last time you had to find a new doctor? Do you remember the process you went through to find that doctor? Did you get to speak to any doctors before going in to have full-fledged appointments with them? Or did you simply call the receptionist and get an appointment where you ended up in an exam room with someone you’d barely met three minutes ago poking at you and asking very personal questions?

It seems to make so much sense that a prospective patient should be able to meet or speak to a doctor before deciding to become an actual patient and be examined by them, doesn’t it? So why is it not the way our medical community works?

Call up your doctor’s receptionist and ask for an appointment to meet the doctor, just to talk. Such an appointment would probably only need something like a fifteen minute slot (you can say a lot in fifteen minutes) and no nurse or exam room at all – simply a few minutes with the doctor in their office or over the phone. Most likely you will be met with confusion at such a request and an “our office/Dr. Smith doesn’t do that kind of thing” response.

Why is that? A doctor is someone who you’ll need to share your most intimate secrets with. Who is really only going to be able to do their job well if you are comfortable with them and who you are only going to go see if you have no ambivalent feelings about. How are we, as patients, expected to form that kind of trust relationship so quickly with someone we aren’t even really given the chance to meet?

Whenever I need a new doctor (which has been frequently in the last five years, as I have moved twice to new states and have a chronic condition that requires me to have a set of doctors at all times), I do research first and find a list of people who might be the right fit for me.

I have a pretty good idea at the point about what I’m looking for in each type of doctor that I need. My regular doctor has to be able to explain things clearly and simply to me, they have to respect me and my unusual issues (ideally, they will have heard of my condition before I walk into their office and mention it), and they have to be willing to work with my other doctors. On the other hand, my neurologist doesn’t have to be able to explain things so well, but he or she does have to make me feel confident in the treatment I’m receiving, like they understand my specific condition and like they do not consider me a fascinating science experiment.

Once I’ve found a few possible candidates, I start making phone calls. I ask every receptionist if there is some time that I can call and speak to the doctor or if the doctor can give me a call back. Never has this question been answered in the affirmative. I’m starting to believe that doctors simply do not have telephones.

After that, I ask for an appointment to meet the doctor – one that will only consist of talking and will have no examination as part of the appointment. I have only once ever been told this was possible, and it still required me to go through the whole weighing/blood pressure/pulse/temperature thing as well as spend ten minutes discussing my medical history with a nurse. If I was only there to meet the doctor, why do I have to share every intimate detail of my life with some nurse I may never see again if I decide not to return to this office?

For nearly every doctor I have ever had I have had to start by making an exam appointment. While examining someone may be a perfectly amiable way to meet a person from the doctor’s point of view, sitting there going through the “who are you and why should I trust you?” questions in my underwear is not a particularly good way to make me feel comfortable or inclined to return.

I don’t feel like I’m crazy in wanting to get to have more agency and comfort when it comes to meeting and choosing a new doctor, either. A doctor is someone that I am expected to share every single intimate detail with, especially when something is going wrong, and someone that I am expected to be comfortable with looking at and touching every inch of my body, no matter how private or sensitive.

Is it so much to ask that I be able to speak to such a person before committing to this kind of relationship with them to make sure that I believe that I can trust them and feel respected by them, even when spread nearly naked on a table in front of them? I don’t think that it is and I find the fact that our current medical establishment treats patients like such a thing is insane absolutely disgraceful. If there is anything that indicates a disrespect for the patient, it’s this attitude that the patient doesn’t even have the right to speak to a doctor and decide if they are comfortable before being expected to strip down and submit to whatever exam is recommended.

*Please* can we get some books about scrappy poor girls with lots of character instead of an endless string of books about debutants and girls “suddenly thrown into the lap of luxury” and the like? They’re fine once in a while, but I’m more than a little tired of a constant parade of “poor little rich girl” stories and photo covers with tacky prom dress-clad models (including many who are trying pretty pathetically to look historical in their tacky mall prom dresses).

Please, somebody go back and remember that some of the best stories have been about overcoming challenges that have nothing to do with pretentious boarding schools or arranged marriages to Venician dukes or not being able to get this season’s “It” bag because your mother has decided to cancel your sixteen credit cards in a cruel and completely unwarranted bout of insanity.

Some of the best stories have had to do with overcoming hardships like finding ways to afford necessities, escaping enslavement or crushing prejudice, and coping with the basic and universal truths of growing up (achieving greater independence; increasing responsibilities; changing relationships with parents, siblings, friends and romantic interests; etc.). There are so many great stories that have *nothing* to do with being pretty and rich and privileged and some of those stories are so incredibly valuable.

Little Women has been a classic almost since the day it was published and the girls in that story have almost nothing. The book *starts* with a comment about there being no money for Christmas gifts and one of the most memorable moments in the book is Jo selling her hair to have money to pay for her mother’s trip to nurse her sick father who has been away fighting in the Civil War. No riches here – just character building through family and life experience.

Today it seems like YA shelves are filled with series books about private academies with cute uniforms and too much money to spend on dances and teas, flouncy historical fictions about second daughters who need to marry rich men for vague reasons that are never fully explained and (inexplicably) normal girls who are suddenly thrown into lives of lavish wealth and excess for reasons that are somewhat unclear and probably don’t matter anyway. Many of the books feel more like excuses to drop the names of designer labels or describe fancy parties with corseted women and dashing Darcy-clones than like actually interesting stories.

Most of us do not wear Chanel dresses to drink too much with our dreamy boyfriends and historical fiction tends to be more interesting when there’s more to it than a couple of bratty girls in corsets flirting too much and trying to get proposed to fastest. Story matters and for a good story, you need conflict. I’m absolutely not saying that a rich girl can’t have conflict enough in her life for a good story, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to work a little harder to show it to me. A poor girl has conflict built into her daily life, even when her family and friends are as loving as can be.

Besides, I really want stories that illustrate that there’s more to life than Dior dresses and making sure you have the handsomest guy on your arm for the party. I want characters with depth and personality, characters I can relate to and sometimes even aspire to be like, characters who I can learn from. I want more than fan fiction and ads for Vogue and everything in it.

There is so much possibility out there, please tell a more varied set of stories! I am tired of every cover having a fancy gown and every description including the words “incredible wealth” or “exclusive boarding school”. Give me some public school girls, some scrappy inner city kids, some farm girls, maybe even some soldier girls and characters with *gasp* jobs at retail and food-service places. Give me stories about the kinds of people I see every day and the kinds of girl I might have been had I lived in another era.

From an avid reader

]]>2Rosepixiehttp://www.pixiepalace.comhttp://www.pixiepalace.com/?p=58692012-02-12T19:30:38Z2012-01-20T17:27:20ZI miss Stan Berenstain. Since his death, his son Mike has been writing the Berenstain Bears series with Jan (Stan’s wife, who has been writing the series with Stan since early on) and what used to be a great series about common childhood experiences like sibling rivalry and bullying and bad dreams has become filled with constant preachy Christian titles.

Now, I don’t have anything against Christian books or anything, but I liked that it was a more or less secular series that any kid could read and relate to. Now new titles are all about finding the Christian version of God, learning to pray and going to Sunday School.

I thought there were a few issues with the series before (the book where Momma decides to get a job is a particularly problematic title), but most of the time it did a good job of keeping Brother and Sister on equal footing without making them the same person and of respecting the feelings and troubles of children without vilifying their parents or teachers. That’s (sadly) not something that I find nearly enough. I simply want to continue to be able to recommend and count on this series for those great qualities.

True, all those good titles are still there, but now almost every new title coming out (and new titles are often the ones that monopolize the shelves in bookstores) are these super religious ones. That’s simply kind of disappointing. And I guess that’s what I wanted to say about it today.